We celebrate life, we thank God for … Theconclaveng

Sometimes in life, people who are loss for words on how to present to the public are encountered. This is not because there are no words or that you are missing. No, it is mainly because you know them closely enough to not want you to hang your words. After all, you know them.

Take the case of Bala Ciroma, who recently retired as a deputy police inspector (Dig). When he was a police officer just coined in the early 90s, his house in Suleja was my transit “field” while I went to Lagos and back, until he tied the wedding knot with his first wife.

And it was a bit before that period that I came across two first -class print journalists who guided me: the deceased Hajiya Bilkisu Yusuf and Alhaji Dahiru Coomasie, who passed last week. Bilkisu Yusuf, whose death I still cry, died in an escape during Hajj in Mina, in Saudi Arabia, on September 24, 2015.

Returning to Bala Ciroma, who retired as one of the best and most respectable officers who ever wear the uniform of the Nigerian police. In a nation looking for the truth and the desire to fight corruption, Ciroma would have led its anti-inesto agencies for a long time. A nation that wants a serious, dignified, out of board, effective and reactive police force would have placed the Ciroma Bala in the position to reform it.

Even as fresher in Suleja in the early 90s, he had shown glimpses of what he could do. I remember a night that we went to a meeting place for young people and young people in the heart. We have been served pepper soup dishes and bottles of Maltex (is it still on the market?), And we sat down to relax while some hot -blooded night crawlers were busy shooting the music played by a live band.

I have not seen anything wrong, with my civil naivety, but he, being a trained policeman, told me to be silent as he rushed back to the station and soon returned.

“There are some guys who suspect,” he told me discreetly, nodding to some young people “from Gung-Ho aspect” over our age, over 30 years. There was no refinement of communication like us now, so he rushed out and returned with some policemen who wear Mufti, gathered those suspicions and brought them back to the interrogation station.

It is no wonder that he has transformed himself into a careful detective, Crack, becoming the police commissioner in the Department of Intelligence and investigation (CIID) of the FCT Police Command. Previously, he was assistant police commissioner, Cid, state command of Kano and responsible for operations at the Commission for economic and financial crimes (EFCC).

Among many, he studied high -profile cases like when seven policemen were killed on Monday 2 July 2018, at the Galadimawa roundabout in Abuja. He also investigated the case of Maryam Sanda (the girl who killed her husband) and her mother, Maimuna Aliyu.

As previously said, just before this period, I came into contact with two great journalistic minds, Dahiru Coomasie and Bilkisu Yusuf. I came to know them because, then, I was based in Zaria, publishing a newspaper, the pointer. I took free copies for them and some other people, including Dr. Bala Usman in Fass, Abu, Zaria.

Through my visits to Bilkisu Yusuf at his office of the Citizen magazine near NDA in Kaduna, I came into contact with other journalists who worked under her, including Mahmud Jaga, Tawey Zakka, Adamu Adamu, Mohammed Haruna and Mohammed Bomoi. It facilitated my invitation to the seventh Islamic summit hosted by the organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), now the organization of Islamic cooperation (OIC), held in Abuja in 1991, where I met the deceased General Shehu Musa Yar’adua and the deceased Sorch Mahmud Gumi-Due Gentlemen.

Yar’adua, we discussed the problem of newspaper printing in her publishing house, while with Gumi it was like a “question and answer session”.

Dahiru Coomasie, which the staff now happily faced as “publisher”, was then editor of the newspaper today, with his office at number 1, Liberia Road, Malali, Kaduna. We also became friends and I have assured me that they have always taken complementary copies for him.

Dahiru was a good man with a strong spirit. To childhood, an injection went wrong and left him lame on one leg. He graduated in Sociology at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in 1977 It was also the treasurer of the ABU branch of Asuu. The compassionate intellectual always resigned in 1985 and returned to Katsina to take care of their elderly father. After his father’s death in 1989, he made an appointment with Toray Communications Ltd, today’s publishers, Abuja Mirror and a Yau newspaper. He was today’s editor from 1990 to 2000, after which he became MD and chief editor of the company. He was also the secretary general of the Nigerian guild of the publishers.

In the middle of 1991, I decided to return home (Borno), since publishing had become difficult to support. Also in that era of copy and paste, in which the columns of the newspapers, between “gutters”, were measured on the force of “excess of matter” and “under the subject” (unlike now, when everything is done on the screen of a computer), the newspaper publishing was at high intensity of capital.

The first edition of my newspaper, published in 1990 by the Nation House Publishing Company, belonging to the deceased General Musa Yar’adua, costs about ₦ 3,300 per 1,000 copies. Bilkisu Yusuf facilitated that money when he gave me a note to Alhaji Bashir Tofa. You will understand the value of ₦ 3,000 when we consider that a new Peugeot 504 was ₦ 7,000 and a new Mercedes-Benz 200 was ₦ 24,000 a few years earlier.

After publishing some editions – sometimes traveling to Lagos looking for cheaper printers – I called it and I turned my attention to the house. The question of survival at home emerged and Malam Dahiru Coomasie gave me an appointment as a journalist of Borno State Today newspapers with a salary of ₦ 750 per month. Yes, it’s not a mistake: ₦ 750 per month or ₦ 9,000 per year. With this money, I started thinking about the wedding, and a few months later, when Yobe was created, I went down to Yobe as today’s journalist and the woman who in the end married my attention.

Last week, the Bala TurbaNed Ciroma of Fika Emirate in the role of Talban Fika, a well -deserved title for probably one of the best incorruptible police officers that Nigeria has ever produced. While celebrating a well -spent life, our prayers for him are that his remaining life is long and that one day he tells his story to his prones in the shade of the trees in his garden. May the future be more blessed for him than the past.

And far Katsina, Dahiru Coomasie, from one of the most prestigious families in Katsina, has been interned. He joined his father, Ahmadu Coomasie, who after the first bank appointed his headquarters in Abuja. He also joined his brothers Senior, Abidina Coomasie, publisher of today, Ayau (Hausa) and Abuja Mirror Newspapers, Ibrahim Coomasie, former police inspector and SaiFullahi Muntaka Coomasie, former justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria. While thanking God for the life of the publisher, Malam Dahiru, we pray that the souls of all our deceased rest in perfect peace.

● Hassan Gimba is Neptune Prime’s publisher and editor.